Counting carbs/calories is a drag. Obsessive scale stepping is a recipe for despair. If you want to count something, "days on habit" is a much better metric. Checking off days on a calendar would do just fine, but if you do it here you get accountability and support. Here's how. Start a new topic in this forum called (say) "Your Name Daily Check In." Then every N day post a "reply" to that topic as to whether you stayed on habit. A simple "<font color="green">SUCCESS</font>" or "<font color="red">FAILURE</font>" (or your preferred euphemism if that's too harsh) is sufficient, but obviously you're welcome to write more if you want. On S-days just register that you're taking an S-day. You don't have to do this forever, just until you're confident you've built the habit. Feel free to check in weekly or monthly or sporadically instead of daily. Feel free also to track other habits besides No-s (I'm keeping this forum under No-s because that's what the vast majority are using it for). See also my <a href="/habitcal/">HabitCal</a> tool for another more formal (and perhaps complementary) way to track habits.

Before landing on Nos, I read Brain over Binge, by Kathryn Hansen, who after years of inproductive therapy overcame her BED (bingeing eating disorder) almost overnight, after reading Rational Recovery, by Jack Trimpey. A bit like her, I thought for years that my unbalanced relationship with food was caused by something wrong with me (physical or psychological) that needed to be addressed, and then everything would get back to normal. Comes out instead it was nothing more than a lit neural pathway. I definitely know what caused its onset early on, I'd always known that bit. What I didn't know is that "recovery" was just about changing the habit, plain and simple. Letting the neural junk (compulsion) during the transition freak out on me and not act is easy when I don't think there is any deep reason behing that drive, other than habit.
Now my case is a little more extreme than average, but I had an uneasy relationship with food also when I was 50 kg so it's not uncommon at all. And the only problem I ever had is just that I was a snacker! so simpe really...

Well, yes, in some ways that is so so true. But honestly, people have different metabolisms and different reactions to different foods weight-wise, so I suspect you were dealing with the not-easiest-metabolism-to-stay-thin-with, ya know? I have coworkers and friends that are just naturally skinny (not even thin, I mean like bone-skinny) and it is not just as simple as they have always had great habits. I mean, yes, great habits could only help them, but terrible habits wouldn't have made them fat. Ever. Just not possible. You could force feed them (they've done these clinical trials) and get them to gain some weight, but as soon as the study ends, the weight falls right back off.

I’ve also read Brain Over Binge. Although I’ve never been bulimic, I found Kathryn H’s thesis very helpful - the idea that there’s nothing wrong with the ‘patient’ psychologically. It changed how I thought about many of my habits - I no longer saw myself as particularly weak, particularly anxious, troubled, confused...just normal. And a snacker, like you Margot!

I certainly agree with Auto that we are all different in our tendencies to hold onto fat or otherwise (though I don’t say that with any scientific knowledge, just my observation of people!). Even exercise is thought to affect people in very different ways - for some, being less useful than for others. I hope that at some point we’ll have access to more individualised health advice to help us stay slim!

Well, yes, in some ways that is so so true. But honestly, people have different metabolisms and different reactions to different foods weight-wise, so I suspect you were dealing with the not-easiest-metabolism-to-stay-thin-with, ya know? I have coworkers and friends that are just naturally skinny (not even thin, I mean like bone-skinny) and it is not just as simple as they have always had great habits. I mean, yes, great habits could only help them, but terrible habits wouldn't have made them fat. Ever. Just not possible. You could force feed them (they've done these clinical trials) and get them to gain some weight, but as soon as the study ends, the weight falls right back off.

That is very true with men, my husband is like that, he can eat what he wants when he wants without any ill repercussions. Tbh I haven't met many women that are naturally skinny and eat a lot. There are several women I've met over the years who ate little because that's what was natural for them, while for me (and the majority I think) there has always been need of some degree of watching what I am doing.
I never had problems with my weight, I had always been consistently low, at a BMI of 18 averagely, but at some point I really got tired of being watchful and I began to think that if I stopped holding back for enough time, I would eventually find balance with my body and not need to be watchful anymore. It didn't work, obviously. Some restriction seems to be unavoidable for me. So in that sense you're very right.

Last edited by margot17 on Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I’ve also read Brain Over Binge. Although I’ve never been bulimic, I found Kathryn H’s thesis very helpful - the idea that there’s nothing wrong with the ‘patient’ psychologically. It changed how I thought about many of my habits - I no longer saw myself as particularly weak, particularly anxious, troubled, confused...just normal. And a snacker, like you Margot!

And your Loretta Graziano Breuning gives an even better description of the dynamics of the neural pathways and limbic system.
I've never been a binger or a bulimic either, but I have always felt the difficulty of reconciling my desires/needs and the ones of my body. Comes out that what I perceived as "my" needs is nothing but a trained neural pattern. Nothing personal about it!

Last edited by margot17 on Mon Mar 04, 2019 1:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.

More than 2 kg gained over the weekend ...
I swear I didn't overeat! I even ate only two meals both sa and su (which I know doesn't particularly work for me but I just happened to get up really late both days). My body really wants to snap back to its previous weight, which is understandable although I won't let it.

But I am actually quite happy of my weekend behavior. I felt like eating 'sans toit ni loi', without any restrictions whatsoever, and it was very tame, I think the Nos habits are rubbing on me. The only thing is, by wanting to be as natural as possible, I didn't make it a point to buffer the occasional carbs, and that's something I can't pull off right now, because of the insulin resistance caused by my excessive body fat (it's a thing unfortunately). I can't drink a coke or a smoothie in the middle of the afternoon and not pay for it all too dearly.

Margot - I agree that most naturally thin women don't eat a lot (especially if they are small, they just don't need it) - but I would argue that most of them do that because they are NOT as hungry as you were. Precisely because of your (probable) insulin resistance, would be my theory, actually. And I think there's decent evidence that insulin resistance precedes weight gain for many people, and that is actually what drives them to overeat and eventually gain weight. Have you read Jason Fung's The Obesity Code? It's not perfect, but I did like the book.

Margot - I agree that most naturally thin women don't eat a lot (especially if they are small, they just don't need it) - but I would argue that most of them do that because they are NOT as hungry as you were. Precisely because of your (probable) insulin resistance, would be my theory, actually. And I think there's decent evidence that insulin resistance precedes weight gain for many people, and that is actually what drives them to overeat and eventually gain weight. Have you read Jason Fung's The Obesity Code? It's not perfect, but I did like the book.

Yeah I read the Obesity Code. I don't think I fit the profile of the typical patient of Dr. Fung, or actually now I do, but at the onset of my perma-binge there was no reason to think I was flooded with insulin, let alone be insuline resistant: I ate very little food especially when I modelled, lots of fruits and veggies and little to no white carbs, drank no sodas, in my family there is no history of metabolic disorders, and I grew up in Northern Italy where temptations are minimal and noone is obese.
Even now actually, fasting does nothing for me weight-wise, while it should according to Fung's reasoning.
I think there is some truth in the insulin concept and there are people for whom it works great. But in the keto forums I saw way too many people who, after a while on keto and IF or ADF, began to stall at an overweight range, for no good reason really if we believe that overweight is insulin driven. Like they stall for years, not months or weeks. Also the 2 keto dudes are still fat, and god knows how much they've fasted (a lot). They do all regress from diabetes, if they have it to begin with, which is important.
Anyway when I earlier said that my problem was mainly of being a snacker, I was hinting at its relevance to insulin, but thinking further maybe it was a bit of a stretch because it's not that I snacked so wildly.

There is instead a systematic error that could be explored in my eating habits before during and after, and it is that I have always had the tendency to eat very few proteins, because I rather dislike meat and fish, I tend to forget to make the legumes, and I can't eat eggs all day every day, ah and cheese is fattening. Even during keto, where a lot of other foods are forbidden, I had a hard time to get to 50g a day, which for my weight is very minimal.

For this reason this delightful theory called the Protein Leverage Hypothesis caught my attention, towards the end of my keto experience last summer. You have to look it up, it's not super-known also because it was elaborated by two zoologists of Sidney, not the first people you would go to for diet problems, what I like about that is that they verified allover the animal kingdom the validity of their hypothesis. What they say is that when animals eat, their bodies prioritize proteins, if their diet is too poor in proteins they will be compelled to continue eating until they get enough proteins. If they can't go on eating because there's no food around, they will adjust in various ways, migrate if possible, or otherwise their body will shut down some functions, they'll stop mating for ex. They studied every kind of animals, from insects to lion and allover the species, while carbs and fats consumption may vary wildly, proteins consumption remains a constant. Also humans, have eaten throughout the years since the 70's a constant amount of proteins, while averagely people are now eating more than 200 cal more than 50 years ago. That is, proteins are more diluted.
A crucial aspect is that the protein leverage hypothesis works more in terms of % than in g of proteins, that is it matters how much the proteins are diluted. So in their evaluations and very fancy charts they have arrived to the optimal number for humans of 15% of calorie intake coming from proteins. If you eat less than that, you will be compelled to overeat. If you eat 15% or a little more than that you will naturally tend to eat less and lose weight if your body is out of balance, or maintain, while a lot more %, like some do especially among body builders, has very negative effects on the health (mTor cycle and other degenerative processes at the cellular level) while it has no relevance to the weight.

This is the most reasonable explanation (to me) of why my craze happened, I even had the bad idea to be vegetarian (but not eat legumes) while nursing my child.
So I am thinking now to design a mod to include this concept in nos.

Last edited by margot17 on Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yesterday was red, but I ended up losing weight so it's all good. I completely forgot about breakfast until 11.00, then we went out, things took longer than we thought so we had no lunch, and all day I forgot about my apples. A big mess. It used to be my usual, because with E moderation and balance are never easy to achieve. At dinner I made a point to up the proteins following the PLH idea, it was pasta with mushroom cream lardons and 3 types of peppercorns, made by E, who's a very talented cook when he feels like, in fact it was delicious. I had a very small amount of pasta and added 2 slices of parma ham, and was perfectly satisfied, which is weird given that I hadn't eaten for hours and I had no side vegetables or apples or fruit, and my plate was half full only.

The weight loss and general satisfaction could mean it would be a good idea if I took the PLH seriously and tracked the protein %, which is something I really didn't wanna do because, like tracking calories, tracking protein % is a lot of work and I don't even know if I can track some of the plates I make for the family, luckily on Chronometer you can save recipes and track them as a whole. An alternative would be to just add a bit of super-proteic food to what I eat and hope it gets me to the good %. I'll proably go for both track all I can track and add protein bullets when I need it.

When I experimented with PHL last september I easily recurred to adding some ham for this purpose. For ex here in France, pink ham is usually sold completely without fat, and it has a whooping 72% of proteins. What complicates things is that you can't eye-ball this stuff at all, as I discovered when I tracked it. Fat for ex adds a lot of calories per volume and so sharply lower the %, you would think that raw ham has the same % as the pink one, but because it comes with some fat it's down to 30%. The fat of the ham is very good health-wise but it you want to also eat, say, some bread with it, fruit, or a salad, you'll have to be careful.

Or I cold just supplement with whey protein powder? I read something about whey not being a good thing but I don't remember what it was and if it should stop me. It would be very handy in a PLH perspective!

Anyway I am quite excited at resuming the PLH and integrating it with Nos.

My various urinalysis results always come back that I eat 1g/kg body weight protein, which is about 55 g/protein a day. I'm not sure the percentage of my intake that is, because I've never tried counting calories.
I do find protein to be satiating and hard to overeat.
For some reason, the idea of protein powder is a big turn-off to me. Probably because it's the antithesis of my attempts to eat unprocessed foods.

Thanks.
If you eat averagely 1500 cal/day, 15% is 225 cal, that is ca 56 g of proteins.
I don't know how many calories I averagely eat either, and I suspect it varies a lot. If I could make that average it would simplify tracking, because then I would only need to track the proteins in g and not the rest I eat.

Yeah I don't like the idea of the protein powder either, I'll see if I can manage with normal stuff.

New week!
This is the first week I don't lose weight, I actually gained some although not too much, without me changing anything, and two days ago when I saw where this was going I got terrified. It's not so much about the fact that I need to lose a lot and can't afford stalling, if that was so I wouldn't even have chosen Nos because it's no secret that Nos takes things slowly. But this is a pattern that you have no idea how many times has repeated itself, I begin a diet, it works initially, and in a month or so it stops working. My body can adapt to ANYTHING! Then I continue just to be sure that it's not just a phase, but weight keeps going up and down around the same level and I'm back to square one. Very frustrating.
Now I feel better because meanwhile I elaborated a mod according to PLH, there is a chance that insufficient proteins may be the root cause of this unbalance and the reason why everything else I've done kept falling short. It may be instead that this is just moving the bar for next disappointment.
I'm rather excited though, because it makes sense. Maybe I just like PLH, like I like Nos, because no-one knows about it and I am such a contrarian, if everybody goes in a certain direction I am compelled to go the opposite way.
I will also pay more attention not to spike my blood sugar, because IR is real at my weight, last weekend was quite shocking in that regard. I may decide to reintroduce the fibers, just take 1 tsp before every meal, and I will never ever again eat isolated sugars or white carbs in the S-days. It has to be together with meals and buffers, always, at least for now.

Ullalà! a whopping 2.1 kg loss in one day! first day of PLH mod is very encouraging and also, it puts me right back in the avg weight loss of 1 kg/week. Nos+PLH could come out to be a fantastic combination for me!
Tracking yesterday was a pain but I'll take that over not losing weight any day...

I want to clarify, if someone can stay at an ideal body weight while keeping proteins low, say around 10%, this is highly recommended for longevity, not only by Valter Longo but also by PLH's Stephen Simpson (he explores that in the last link I gave). Simpson really makes things super-clear in that seminar to the Institute of Molecular Bioscience: your ideal diet depends on what you're after, he shows various colorful fancy charts that make it very easy to understand. So if you can pull off a high carb low protein diet without gaining weight, and you're not particularly interested in being very fertile, well that's the way to go for general health purposes. In my case that's not obviously the way to go right now, according to the theory. Maybe once ideal weight is achieved and maintenance feels solid (a real high hypothetical for me, I may get there at age of 95), I could try to lower proteins to 10% too, because I think that when things went out of control for me I was way way under that %, and it seems also what my body is inclined to prefer, so maybe I could pull that off too. Maybe not and it doesn't necessarily mean I would die younger, my mother is preternaturally healthy at an age of 84, and she eats loads of proteins, only they mainly come from fish, anyway what I'm saying is she's longeve even if she's probably even at much higher than 15%.

Anyway I am super-pleased. I've known about PLH since august and I don't know why I had put it in a corner. It's my new favorite pet. Together with Nos of course. I'll have to do some acrobatics tomorrow to offset the moderate sweets, a lot of ham is probably going to be eaten! maybe I could consider some bio unflavored unweetened whey powder for the weekends, just to make things more manageable.

Hi WOF, you didn't miss anything earlier as I only wrote about the Protein Leverage Hypothesis and the relevance of proteins dilution to weight gain.
I haven't looked too much into the point that (I think?) you were inquiring about, that is the link between a low protein diet and longevity/general health, because my natural tendency is to eat too few proteins so in that respect I need no convincing. Towards the end of the seminar I linked to, Simpson shows a few very interesting charts on this subject, you can look it up. Also, read this upProtein Consumption Linked to Longevity. If you're over 65, it's actually a good idea to eat more proteins.

As far as I know the reason why proteins seem to be so bad for general health is a complex subject, but big part of it is the link between proteins and the mTOR pathway and IGF-1. I haven't really looked into it in detail though, as I said.

Monday Week 6
135.5 kg
Messed up at dinner, I ate too little as tracking calories and proteins while cooking a simple every day dinner had stressed me out and then I had to eat later. Really weighing all the ingredients, then weighing the result of it all when it's cooked, then weighing how much of it I actually put on my plate, multiplied on the three things I prepared (mixed sauteed vegetables, basmati rice and lentils with bacon and mustard) was definitely too much accounting for me, I don't know how people do it.
On sunday E. made fresh croissants for breakfast, which was really nice of him, and I freaked out because I didn't know what to right on Cronometer. Madness.
I think I'm better off with my old mod of eating in quadrants. Maybe pay a little more attention to the proteins, like when it's something like chickpeas which have a low % add a slice of ham. I've verified with the tracking that I am usually able to eye-ball a decent % if I make it a point to pay attention.
Also, I need to relax a little on the weight. If some weeks I don't lose any, it has to be ok.

Last edited by margot17 on Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:13 am, edited 6 times in total.

Thank you! Well after the numbers of the fast you saw last time, and the rebounce, it's moved back down ever so slowly. I have been a bit frustrated with that but then I decided to be ok with it. They are kg, not lb, so I easily feel the pressure to lose the weight faster.

Things make no sense at all. On Thursday I had a NWS and I gained 1.5 kg because of just a slice of chocolate cake. Yesterday was a f-it moment and I had 2 slices of pizza both lunch and dinner, plus a 1/2l bottle of coca cola, and I didn't gain any.

So... some unruly behavior this weekend on my part, and what's funny is that I gained less than I usually gain in the weekends. Crazy. I'll probably pay for it further on.

Auto I don't know that I have particularly restrictive rules but I do kind of push it a little during the week, this coming week I'll stop doing that. I think I got batty mostly because of frustration at my weight not going down lately, I can do rules but if they don't give me returns I freak out easy, I'm probably not the most patient person. Anyway not 'terribly' batty, european pizzas are nothing like american ones, both in dimension and nutrient density. People here usually eat one pizza in a meal, I ate it in 2. Still pizza twice in a day omg...

I am still looking for a way to accelerate my weight loss. Tracking the proteins was too cumbersome and didn't make much of a difference, I just eyeball it now, keeping faithful to the quadrants mod helps too in that regard.
I am now thinking of introducing a new mod (besides the apples and the quadrants) by next thrusday, I am already toying with it starting today at breakfast although I won't track it until the new week starts. It's something called fletcherizing, although I wouldn't go to the extremes of Horald Fletcher. Basically, it's making it a point to chew properly.

This is not a new idea for me, I was exposed to it back in my thin days in 2003 I think? something around that time, through a book called "The Hiller Method" that was independently sold over internet by the author, who rapidly lost 60 pounds just by following these simple guidelines:
- chew every bite at least 30 times
- put down the fork and sip some water every 3 bites
- never gulp water, only sip it, also out of meals
- never background eat

(I still have the e-book and it's a nice and quick read. If anyone is interested I can send it no problem.)

I was never able to implement it and make it a habit in the past, one reason is because I could never bring myself to count, it's a little too screwy. But Hiller himself says one needs to count only at the beginning, if ever, just to get the sense of how long to chew. Mainly, I just didn't know the art of tracking a new habit. So this could be just the right context for it. The idea would be to keep on chewing well always, also on S-days, in fact I hope this could be the trick that makes me gain less in the weekend. Initially I'll have to track the chewing after every single meal, because it's incredibly easy for me to forget it. Hopefully in time, I will just need to track it by by day, like I do with nos.

Besides the weight loss, chewing thoroughly is good for health. Fletcher goes to great length in his books (I actually only read one, because it was a bit boring) to describe how strong and fit he got thanks to fletcherizing, some of his anecdotal evidence is quite unbelievable but it's unlikely he made it all up (because the people in Harvard would have said something, if none of that was true). Famously, one of his best friends and followers was old John Rockefeller, who made it to 98 years.

Fletcher chewed every bite 100 times which is insane. But I do like the elegance of a simple practice trumping it all. All dietary elaborations just made redundant by making it a point to chew well. Supposed it works, of course. I am not terrible at chewing and neither a particularly fast eater but I seldom would go past 20 times when I don't pay attention. Also, I am not intending to throw out of the window any dietary principle. Nos, the quadrants and the apples still stand strong.

I definitely think you get the award for more frequently pondering/trying out more mods than any other NoSer I've ever seen. I read each of your new ideas with interest, and think they are probably all fine if they work for you, but in my mind I'm always hoping you stick with plain NoS despite tinkering with all the other aspects of your relationship with food.

I'm also wondering - how fast did you gain so much weight? You have mentioned a few times that you used to be pretty thin. Was it pregnancy? Did your habits change drastically at some point?

I feel I am doing something very close to a vanilla-nos, I call them mods but they're not like removing S-days or allowing sweets during the week. Anyway yeah I am researching and tweaking a lot, I really would like to be able not to take forever to lose this weight. If I had just a few pounds to lose, if any, like most people here, I would probably just chill and let things happen when they happen, but I really feel the pressure to find the right combination, and when that is found I'll chill too. If the chewing works, maybe that's it, combined with the rest, it may be all I need.

Yeah it was after the pregnancy, I was thin all my life before... I even modelled in my 20's, that and in highschool were my thinnest times. At 37, when E. and I began to live together, I weighed 53 kg (I am 1.70m tall, so BMI 18.3). But I've always had to be careful with food.
During pregnancy, at 40, I gained weight obviously, but when my baby was 4 months almost all of it was gone. Then something really turned. I think it was a mix of things, not all physical, that reached a breaking point. I had a bad case of post-partum depression, made worse by the fact that I was very sleep-deprived. I continued to have problems with sleep for many years after the pregnancy. And the previous years of restriction may have rubbed on me.
And so I began to eat a lot. I perma-snacked heavily on white rice butter and soy sauce, or pasta butter and parmisan. Bowl after bowl... how crazy. Never until the point of feeling sick, but still, a lot.
5 years in, I was 125 kg. Then I continued growing but more slowly, to 150. Then I stalled there for a while.
After I finally tried the ashwaganda last summer, and managed to sleep better, I slowly lost 10 kg, and when I landed on NOS I was 139.

During these 15 years I've been tested left and right, my mom is a doctor and really insisted on it, but nothing was found. Insulin resistance was ruled out because my glycemy was persistently low. Maybe I even tested fasting insulin, I don't really remember. Hormones, thyroid, liver, everything was perfect. Now I haven't taken a test in a while and I think I would come out with some more problems due to comorbidity I guess, but I must say I feel much better after my 3 fasts and beginning Nos. Pains are all gone.

Last edited by margot17 on Wed Mar 20, 2019 2:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

OMG I lost 2 kg first day of THM (the Hiller method, aka chewing well)!!!
(I decided to track it already BTW, what's the beginning of a week? Life is now...)
It would be amazing if it worked well, it was no trouble at all to chew more thoroughly, I even liked it.

NOS and THM are a perfect combination, being both some kind of " what great-grandma would tell you if she'd made it to 120"

Last edited by margot17 on Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

I reread the book yesterday evening and it's very poorly written. But it's an ebook and if you're interested I can easily send it to you.
All difficulty really boils down to establishing the habit, Ive known THM for years and I was never able to REMEMBER to chew properly. I wonder now if tracking it would help in that regard, I really hope so.

(I have decided to track it as F for fletcherism instead of THM for The Hiller Method, because after all Horace Fletcher is the first who promoted chewing for weightloss and health purposes, Mr. Hiller was unaware of him but still his idea is derivative).
ETA: I re-read part of one of Fletcher's books and there's an intuitive eating component of his ways that I don't care about (IE really doesn't work with me, while NOS does), and besides he goes for chewing to an extreme I am not interested in. So at the end of the day, I will just track it as C, for chewing, bim! problem solved.

Last edited by margot17 on Wed Mar 20, 2019 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OMG I lost 2 kg first day of THM (the Hiller method, aka chewing well)!!!
(I decided to track it already BTW, what's the beginning of a week? Life is now...)
It would be amazing if it worked well, it was no trouble at all to chew more thoroughly, I even liked it.

NOS and THM are a perfect combination, being both some kind of " what great-grandma would tell you if she'd made it to 120"

Woooowwwww ... I'm very happy for you !!!

To say for my part that I asked Margot for the book and she very kindly sent it to me. It is true that it is poorly written, but it is a very nice book and very hopeful.

I have also started with this method, I will post in my thread to explain it in more detail and I will do a daily count.

Thank you lovely Octavia!
Still chewing my way - I don't know if it's making any difference at all weight-wise, but I like it. I don't obsess over it though, also because by second bite I totally lose count. But overall I am chewing more my food and I can see how that influences the way I fill my plate. I am not yet in a place where I can comfortably and with no ill consequences leave food on the plate, but I can see that as it takes longer to eat what I have to eat, there's the thought popping in my head of next time filling less my plate, not because I have to, but because I want to.
I also slept better, but that may be because I have made a new batch of capsules of ashwaganda, and I am trying a bigger size.

I have missed a lot! Finally jumping to the end to say hi. I hope very much for you that you can soon find a reasonable routine to just stick with for a few months. I have to admit reading about drinking oil and clipping noses and such started to make my stomach flip. I also have to admit that I'm so curious about how you went from a BMI of 18 to where you are without feeling like you were eating a lot (since you said you felt you have never eaten more.) But maybe you weren't eating many veggies?

Anyway, enjoy your meals and your time not eating, too!

Count plates, not calories. Three a day. 9 years & counting
Age 65
SBMI Jan/10-30.8
Jan/12-26.8
Mar/13-24.9 Stayed at +/- 8-lb. for three years Sept/17 22.8 (but more fluctuation)
Mar/18 22.2

Thank you lovely Octavia!
Still chewing my way - I don't know if it's making any difference at all weight-wise, but I like it. I don't obsess over it though, also because by second bite I totally lose count. But overall I am chewing more my food and I can see how that influences the way I fill my plate. I am not yet in a place where I can comfortably and with no ill consequences leave food on the plate, but I can see that as it takes longer to eat what I have to eat, there's the thought popping in my head of next time filling less my plate, not because I have to, but because I want to.
I also slept better, but that may be because I have made a new batch of capsules of ashwaganda, and I am trying a bigger size.

I have missed a lot! Finally jumping to the end to say hi. I hope very much for you that you can soon find a reasonable routine to just stick with for a few months. I have to admit reading about drinking oil and clipping noses and such started to make my stomach flip. I also have to admit that I'm so curious about how you went from a BMI of 18 to where you are without feeling like you were eating a lot (since you said you felt you have never eaten more.) But maybe you weren't eating many veggies?

Anyway, enjoy your meals and your time not eating, too!

Hi Oolala! Yes I am happy I didn't follow through with the shambala diet!

"Now" I don't feel like I am eating more than you guys, although I can't say I eat as little as, say, Linda or Auto.
In the process of getting fat, I did eat a lot more than what I was used to and what I now eat.
But if you get down some numbers, it's not as much as one may think. To start with, 4 months after the birth of my baby, I was around 60kg (not 53 kg because I hadn't lost all my baby weight). From 60kg to 125kg, in 5 years, is 13 kg a year, more or less 1kg a month. You don't need to eat your ass off to gain 1kg a month consistently. When I think of someone as big as me, even I tend to think they may be eating, or have been eating, tons and tons of junk food and nutrient dense food to get to where they are, but that's not always true, and certainly it wasn't my case, I just ate consistently more than my body needed, and it piled up rapidly. I probably also didn't have the best of metabolisms, Auto is right about that.
I did eat a lot of rice and butter... I continued eating my usual vegetables, but the quote of carbs went rogue. I never passed a day not telling myself, today I'll behave. I also went into pyschotherapy for a few month to find out what was wrong with me. But I just couldn't go back to my old ways no matter how much I tried.
When you guys say, oh I wish I was able to stick to the NOS rules like I used to, and I don't know why I can't stick to staying green like before, it's a similar thing, only in my case it was very extreme, because of my natural intensity as whatever I do I seem to usually do it tenfold, for the good and the bad, and there were also some co-factors that contributed to make things harder.

Wow, youre thread is very interesting. I cant believe I hadn’t read it before. Im also super surprised you think I eat a small amount. I feel like i eat a lot but it’s sometimes good to see things from a different perspective.

Thank you Linda!
I do not to really pay much attention to what people write about what they eat or don't eat as it feels kind of nosy. So I really don't "know" that you eat like a bird, it's just the idea I have of you, if that makes sense.

Do you think your gains were consistent and gradual? Mine never were, but I was a compulsive overeater, usually eating a lot in a short period of time. I gained larger amounts and then stabilized. I would gain and then stabilize at the higher weight. The losses were similar, though in less dramatic amounts. Loss would usually follow short periods of eating very little just because that's how my desires worked periodically, usually on weekends, paradoxically.

In any case, here you are. All you can do is stabilize a new baseline and then experiment from there.

Count plates, not calories. Three a day. 9 years & counting
Age 65
SBMI Jan/10-30.8
Jan/12-26.8
Mar/13-24.9 Stayed at +/- 8-lb. for three years Sept/17 22.8 (but more fluctuation)
Mar/18 22.2

I am experimenting with a few things these days. One that I want to mention because it's perfectly nos-compatible is something I got from an italian psychologer and psychotherapist called Giorgio Nardone. He cures every kind of neurotic loops like fobias, ocd, eating disorders, depression, using what is called strategic therapy, basically school of Palo Alto stuff. He worked for years with Paul Watzlavick (hope I didn't forget some zeds) and they elaborated most of what he does together. I found out about Nardone thanks to Dalia Negra btw, hello! (no waving smiley? imagine I put a waving smiley).

So what I've been doing for a few days is, at the beginning of the day, I ask myself how I could fail. Yes, it's weird, I am not meant to ask myself what I should do to make things right, but what I could do to make things wrong. There's an interesting rationale behind that choice that I can explain if anyone is interested, but anyway, it helps because it unwinds a bit the irrational impulses, but also it's interesting to notice how my idea of what I could do wrong evolves (or modulates, I don't know if it's actually going anyhere). I make a list and I do it in writing because that works better for me. Initially I thought I would write the same things over and over, but every day it changes, based on what concerns are more present in my mind.
Today I woke up ready to commit murder (diet-wise of course) so there were many items in the list about irrational eating and freaking out for no good reason, and now I am just normal. The exercise totally worked for me to disperse the pressure to do something irrational.

I write it on Google Docs so I can do it on the phone or on the computer and it's always the same document.

As for articles in English, with a quick search I found this but it doesn't really give an idea of the paradoxical way that they "chess-mate" the loop, which is pretty cool imo. If I happen to find something more I'll let you know.

I'm fluent in french, italian and english, and I kind of suck at spanish and norwegian. But french, italian and spanish are similar so it's not all that impressive. And my english could be better, my son especially often finds how I say things rather hilarious. Also because when I talk I tend to forget what language I'm using so I begin with one and then continue with another, I can put all three in one sentence without realizing. Fortunately, this only happens when I talk with E. and L. or my mom.

I expected that E. and L. would buddy up to make a prank but I didn't expect it to be coming from that side, at all, because E. takes business so very seriously...
I think I mentioned here that we hired this amazing analyst, Phil Suttle, as a consultant. We receive a daily paper, a weekly and a monthly, with charts and commentaries. They're very helpful for us and I never fail to read them. E. receives the paper from Phil and then forwards it to me. So what E the devil did was, he altered the text of the daily's commentary, using exactly the same fonts and mimicking Phil's language to the T, and scared the shit out of me, because if what he wrote was true, then some unfortunate stocks we have, that I've been nursing like babies, while E wanted to take the loss and move on, would just drop like stones, causing us a huge loss and causing me a terrible disappointment because it's become almost a personal matter for me, to see those stocks come back to mama. E. went slightly too far with the text, as Phil would never be so explicit, but as E.'s understanding of fundamental analysis is far superior than mine, he had me fooled completely. I almost had a heart attack!

Last edited by margot17 on Tue Apr 02, 2019 9:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

Oh my, it was such a relief to find out it was only a prank... I was like, ok the market is closed now and tomorrow only god knows where it opens, what to do? hedge with gold starting now? ride it is not an option, with recession possibly looming....go to the nearest church and pray? I'm calling Phil!!! you guys look into Bloomberg and Reuter, chop chop! where's the chart? ... manic already ha ha!